companions, more experienced and more cautious, did not follow his example. Without giving the least advantage to the retreating enemy, or allowing them a moment's rest, they drove them on toward the top of the mountain. The smothered reports of the rifles, the shouts, and the occasional screams grew fainter and fainter, till they were lost in the distance :

And silence settled, wide and still,
On the lone wood and mighty hill.'

No trace of the fight remained, but the smoke that clung in the damp, motionless air, and the dead who were scattered about the wood.

Among these, to all appearance, was my ancestor. He lay on his face, poor fellow, which had rested on his left arm as he fell, while the blood dropped from his forehead. Yet he was not dead, or I should never have lived to write this history of his exploits. He lay four hours, as he told my grandfather, in a swoon, for the bullet had ploughed across his temple, within a hair's-breadth of his life; my grandfather well remembers the scar, which is indeed plainly visible in the portrait of my ancestor which hangs in the best parlor of my respected relative, Bridgadier General Artemas Carver, physician, of the town of Swanzey, New-Hampshire. When his senses returned, he was in a state of wretched bewilderment. He was quite oblivious of all that had happened, and unconscious of every thing around. A sense of icy coldness chilling all his limbs, and a dull pain in his head, were his only sensations when his eyes opened, till the dreary forms of the savage rocks and trees obtruded themselves on his vision like a night-mare.

He felt about him with his hands, and grasped them full of clammy oozing moss. Then, turning his eyes upward, he beheld what increased his perplexity and confusion. It was a pale, though handsome female face; no other, in short, than that of Sarah, who was stooping over him, frightened and trembling, but animated with all the affectionate and self-forgetting devotion of a woman. This, I am aware, has an air of romance; and I feel really anxious in setting it down, lest the reader should accuse me in his heart of unfaithfulness to my trust, and an unprincipled intention to sacrifice truth to effect. I beg him to banish all such doubts. My ancestor was no fit hero of romance; his sleep was too healthful and sound to be disturbed by visions, and as for day-dreaming, he eschewed it utterly; and Sarah was no heroine, but only a warm-hearted girl, who could flatter herself sometimes with her own image in the mirror, and in the moment of her lover's peril, lose all thought of self in fearless disinterested affection.

The warning she so unexpectedly gave the white men that morning nearly cost her her life. More hatchets than one had been raised over her head, and it was fortunate that the chief of the party was a man of authority, feared and admired by his tribesmen. Nothing but his prompt interference saved her. As it was he who had taken her prisoner with his own hand, she was, according to Indian usage, his exclusive property. Though he had at first intended to sell her to the French in Canada, her beauty soon made him change his mind, and resolve to take her to Caughnawaga as his squaw. This flattering

destination preserved her from immolation, when the frontiersmen made their rash attack: her savage lover, if he deserved the name, placed her for safe keeping in the old hollow oak, round which the Indians made their last stand. Here she listened in terror to the sounds of the fight, and the pattering of bullets on the tough rind of her prison; and when the struggle had passed away and all was quiet, she crept out and explored the scene of violence. There lay her lover among the fallen. At first, she clasped her arms around him in despair, but feeling his heart still beating, she arranged the soft boughs of spruce beneath him, and brought water from the brook to bathe his face and temples.

When Endicott could stand, and had recovered his faculties, evening had already approached, as could be seen by the ruddy light that brightened at intervals the thick canopy of leaves above them, and richly illumined the foliage that screened the lake from their view. They wandered down to the shore: the bright and glorious landscape of mountains and crimsoned waters, sprinkled with their numberless islands, brought new life to their spirits by contrast with the sombre forest. The fresh breeze of the summer evening, too, was very unlike the heavy atmosphere of the wood.

Their situation was still very perilous. Endicott sought out a place in which to pass the night, and chose a deep sheltered nook among rocks and bushes, not far from the shore. Here he ventured to kindle a fire; and preparing a bed of the young shoots of the spruce, he built over it a little hut of boughs sufficient to ward off the night wind. Sarah entered it and lay down. He took his gun, and seated himself

on a stone near by, to keep watch against prowling beasts or men. As the night grew dark, the wind freshened; the waves rose high, and splashed with a monotonous sound upon the rocks of the shore. The trees over his head, too, rustled their leaves with a mysterious whispering sound, as the breeze passed through them; and a patch of long grass near the shore bent and rose mournfully. Endicott watched the dark restless waters, and the stars that shone faintly between the treetops, till, about the middle of the night, overcome with fatigue, he fell into a doze. It was disturbed by hideous dreams: loud voices at length struck on his sleeping ear too distinctly to be any thing but reality. He started from slumber in bewilderment. Hoarse, impatient voices, were indeed sounding close at hand; they were those of his comrades, returned from the battle to visit the field and recover their canoes. joyfully shouted in reply, and was welcomed as one from the dead.

He

Not to protract my tale, I will leave the adventurers to return to the settlements without following them. The Indians had been completely beaten. A small body of them, who held together, had been driven over the back of the mountains as far as the swamps around Wood Creek, where they scattered like a flock of partridges through the woods. Their cruelties were bitterly expiated. But to avoid wearying the reader with a love-story, I will only remark that, many years after, when the War of the Revolution broke out, my ancestor and Sarah were living, surrounded by a numerous progeny, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a large house that a month ago might be seen standing near the banks of Charles River, close behind Mount Auburn Cemetery. I

regret to say that it has since been burnt down, after having weathered a century. How fortunate that my ancestor's papers were rescued and placed in my hands! Here he dwelt till his fiftieth birth-day, when he was transfixed with three bayonets, as he brought up the retreat on Bunker Hill; and as the steel entered his gallant breast, he struck so fierce a blow at one of his eager slayers, that he severed his arm at the elbow.

His descendants have scattered far and wide over the country, and over the world. Three of them are now in Texas; one is in Oregon; one is a captain in the Russian service; another is seeking his fortune in India; beside many more, too numerous to mention. Six flourishing new towns in the West, to say nothing of a new species of patent rifles, and eight steam-boats several of which however have lately burst their boilers - have derived their names from our illustrious house. Of all our race, my relative the Bridgadier, and my humble self alone excepted, none have remained quietly at home. One description will apply to all the members of the family. We are very little men, with black eyes, sunken cheeks, and a dark yellowish complexion; for, to say the truth, we have inherited none of my ancestor's good looks; yet so tough and impassive that neither can labor fatigue us, nor cold, heat, rain or snow have any effect on us. Should I decide to publish a family history, it would present to the world an edifying picture of Yankee enterprise.

THE

PILGRIMAGE OF

LIFE.

BY WILLIAM JAMES COLGAN.

New-York, 1845.

How the heart travels with its anxious load!
Like pilgrim journeying from day to day,
Hoping to find some kind though strange abode,
Where Weariness its toils aside may lay,

While welcomes Peace with smiles the wanderer from his way.

When Death has gathered to his silent home

The voices of our Life, the friends so dear,

Through what a wilderness condemned to roam,
We struggle on, 'mid many a bitter tear,

Nor heed the passing mockery, ever near.

Joys of the world! how brittle is your chain!
Thought breaks its fetters, and the spirit hies
To scenes long past-to innocence again;
And guileless revels beneath brighter skies,
Nor deems it all a dream, till Fancy's vision dies.

E'en thus we weave the fair flowers for the urn:
Love brings the tribute to the dead and gone;
And though their parted steps will ne'er return,
We feel their Love is true, and living on,

To greet our longing souls when endless bliss is won.

RECEIVED LAWS OF PLANETARY MOTION.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

Ir will appear perhaps like great presumption for any person who may not have attained a name among those devoted to the study of the natural sciences, to venture to call in question any of the conclusions that satisfied the minds of such men as NEWTON and LAPLACE in their investigation of the laws of planetary motion: but it has long appeared to the writer of this article, that the generally received theory which supposes the revolution of the planets around the sun or centre of our solar system to be the result of a nicely-adjusted and counteracting repulsion and attraction; or of centrifugal and centripetal forces so perfectly balanced as to convert a movement at right angles into a uniform circular or elliptical revolution; can have but little to sustain it except theory or assumption alone. This theory appears to the writer to involve so obvious a fallacy, that he cannot account for its reception except upon the supposition that it is regarded in the light of a plausible speculation, having no practical bearing upon the study of astronomy, and as not being relied upon for aid in solving any problem or question connected with the ascertained truths of that science.

The theory as propounded is understood to teach, that if a smaller

body be thrown off with great force from a larger one, as the moon from the earth, or the earth from the sun, or if a small body should be projected in a straight line across the orbit of a large one, and near enough to become attracted by it, that the smaller body, which otherwise would move forward in a straight line forever, and at a uniform rate of motion, is by the law of gravitation or attraction drawn toward the larger body, and compelled to revolve forever around it in a fixed orbit, without being drawn to it by the continued operation of the power of gravity, acting upon the supposed continued operation of the projectile force; which forces are thus mutually neutralized by the production of a compound or circular movement.

This I understand to be the theory; and it is one that involves, in my belief, two remarkable fallacies. The first is, that the centrifugal or projectile force first communicated to a body in space beyond the sphere of attraction of any other body, would propel the projected body forward forever at an undiminished rate of movement. This supposes the original impulse or power once given, to act forever by a natural law; and to make an inert mass of matter, once put in motion, actually to possess the power of continuing the motion forever. How a power that is thus communicated or superadded, and has no necessary connexion with the existence of matter, should thus change its nature, and impart to it the power of motion without change or diminution; and without being counteracted by the gravitation of the body itself toward its own centre, even if there were no external resistance from the atmosphere, or from the ethereal fluid that is supposed to fill the regions of space, remains to be explained; and would seem, in connexion with the known fact of the inherent gravitation of matter toward its own centre, and its consequent tendency to fixedness, to be most unphilosophical.

The second fallacy would seem to consist in the supposition, that the action of the centripetal power, or law of attraction in the larger body, would be sufficient to change the direction of the body moving in a straight line and draw it toward the larger body, so as to cause the smaller body to revolve around the larger at a fixed distance, and without ever being drawn to it. The natural and obvious inference would be, that if a large body could thus, by the power of attraction, change the course of a small body from a straight line, so as to make it revolve around the larger one, that the orbit of its revolution would steadily and rapidly lessen, until in the course of a very few revolutions it would be drawn to the larger one. That this would be the result seems inevitable, if the power of the larger body were sufficient to change the direction of a body moving in a straight line, into an inclination toward the larger one, sufficient to cause it to revolve around the last; for if the centripetal power of the earth, for instance, could change the course of the moon, if moving in a straight line from it, into an elliptical movement around it, the attraction of the larger body upon the curve line would unquestionably be greater than it was upon the straight line; and would continue to increase in the same proportion in which it first acted upon it, and with an augmented power from the diminished resistance, until the motion of the smaller body would be absolutely overcome, by being drawn to the larger one. It would seem to be evident,